Thoughts from the interface of science, religion, law and culture

After spending several years touring the country as a stand up comedian, Ed Brayton tired of explaining his jokes to small groups of dazed illiterates and turned to writing as the most common outlet for the voices in his head. He has appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show and the Thom Hartmann Show, and is almost certain that he is the only person ever to make fun of Chuck Norris on C-SPAN.

EVENTS

Mabus Arrested for Violating Probation

The Montreal Police have announced that they have once again arrested Dennis Markuze, aka David Mabus, for violating the terms of his probation. He was already arrested and found to have engaged in cyber-stalking and making threats, but he was put on probation with the condition that he stop doing it. As I predicted at the time, he did not stop. I and others have continued to get deluged with his comments and emails full of threats and bizarre diatribes. Maybe this time they’ll take it seriously and institutionalize him. Unfortunately, they turned around and released him again:

In August, Tim Farley, one of the people Markuze admitted to threatening in May, asked Montreal police to investigate but was initially told that, in their opinion, no such order existed. It wasn’t until Farley relayed verbatim sections of Quebec Court Judge Louise Bourdeau’s May 22 judgment to the Montreal police that they finally decided to investigate Markuze again.

“The first part of the battle was convincing the police that there was a (court) order,” Farley said Monday upon learning Markuze had been arrested again. Farley said he believes Markuze used one Twitter account alone more than 8,500 times since Nov. 1.

Farley also said he believes Markuze was behind a series of threatening messages posted on a webcast Farley took part in on Wednesday with a group called Virtual Skeptics. One message read, “the police won’t save you.” Markuze appeared before a judge at the Montreal courthouse on Monday where he was released after agreeing to a series of conditions, including that he not communicate with Farley.

The first time they did this, he got very little psychological treatment. It’s time to lock him up in a mental hospital. It should be quite obvious by now that he isn’t going to stop on his own.

Maybe Mabus’ victims need to start complaining loudly and publicly that his crimes are not being taken seriously by the officials because his threats are primarily aimed against skeptics, humanists, and atheists. Would they be so cavalier if popular outspoken apologists for faith were on the end of Mabus’ disturbing and violent rants? It’s discrimination. So HEY!

Is that really the case? Possibly/probably not, given what I’m reading about the general state of things in Montreal. But maybe adopting this tactic might succeed in getting enough publicity and attention on this issue to wake everyone up and help Markuze receive the help he so desperately needs.

Knowing Canada’s legal system, I can’t say I’m surprised. They have difficulty with the concept of locking multiple murderers away, and we have homeless mentally ill wandering our streets rather than being compelled to take treatment in secure treatment centres.

So, no, doesn’t surprise me they released him, and I don’t expect he’ll serve more than a handful of days behind bars unless and until he actually kills someone… and possibly not many days even then.

and we have homeless mentally ill wandering our streets rather than being compelled to take treatment in secure treatment centres.

So, you like the concept of locking people up, do you? Or do you actually believe that forced “treatment” works?

With regards to this “Mabus” fellow, is it proven that he is really dangerous? I have seen some of his behaviour on the Internet (as documented by Ed and PZ, mostly) and I agree that it should have consequences for him. He should be told to stop doing that shit. But how credible are his threats in reality? I wonder.

With regards to this “Mabus” fellow, is it proven that he is really dangerous? I have seen some of his behaviour on the Internet (as documented by Ed and PZ, mostly) and I agree that it should have consequences for him. He should be told to stop doing that shit. But how credible are his threats in reality? I wonder.

Speaking as a person with a mental illness: Oh fuck you, you infantilizing jackass.

Beyond that: do people have no right to not be harassed and threatened? Who the fuck are you to decide what’s a “credible” threat and what isn’t? He’s physically shown up at venues where atheists congregated and made violent gestures on his way out. How much more “credible” would it have to be if it was YOUR ass on the line?

I find it shocking that some people want him imprisoned; what he really needs is help. Prison for someone with mental problems would amount to society’s torturing him for being abnormal – a horrible thing. He’s not a failure of the justice system he’s a demonstration of how poor healthcare (even in Canada, apparently!) is for those with mental health problems. In the US, it appears that he’d just get cycled in and out of the criminal judicial system, building a huge rap-sheet for being an annoying web weirdo, and then eventually be imprisoned if he actually hurts someone. Which does beg the question “why make it illegal to threaten people over the internet, since for all intents and purposes it’s not?”

Personally, yes I do believe that in some cases secure treatment is necessary. I know too many people who are mentally ill who are living in misery because they are not in an institution they can’t just walk away from and get lost. They get exploited, beaten and often end up in and out of jails and prisons.

A woman I know who has the mental capacity of your average seven year old has been pregnant three times and contracted both herpes and syphilis, because she was willing to do whatever anyone told her to do – even if she didn’t like it. She lived in a group home, but would wander off for days at a time – getting sold as a compliant whore. Pregnancies and STIs aside, she was beaten badly on several occasions, had extensive vaginal and anal tearing on a regular basis and her arm broken on one occasion.

She is one of the more extreme examples, but her story is repeated all over the U.S. and probably Canada as well. In most cases secure treatment has nothing to do with protecting everyone else from the mentally ill, it is about protecting them from the everyone else and prison. But we are bent on this fucking moronic idea that no one, or virtually no one should be in mental institutions. What that translates to is the mentally ill not getting the help they need. Not even kids.

Due to my own mental illness and that of my oldest son, I am involved with an advocacy organization. One of the issues we’re trying to address is preventing kids who are mentally ill, who need to be institutionalized, from being incarcerated instead. There is a boy who was born with a malformed brain, 14yrs old with the mental capacity of a six year old. He has the body of a normal teen though, with the same pubescent hormones raging. He is also considerably bigger than his mom. He developed sexual aggression – something he can’t even begin to comprehend. He needed to be institutionalized while mental health professionals could work him through it – something that if nothing else works, will usually settle out naturally. Instead he was put into juvenile detention and when he got out, his sister was removed from the home by CPS because his mom had nowhere else to put him and she couldn’t be in the same home with him.

Again, a story that is repeated every day, all over the U.S. and possibly Canada – though they may take better care of juveniles than we do.

So yes, I believe in secure treatment facilities, thank you very much.

Speaking as a person with a mental illness: Oh fuck you, you infantilizing jackass.

As a fellow sufferer, I wish you a good-as-can-be day. I do not see a reason, nor do I have the time for trading unpleasantries.

Beyond that: do people have no right to not be harassed and threatened?

They have that right, yes.

Who the fuck are you to decide what’s a “credible” threat and what isn’t?

I would not decide any such thing, that is what the courts are for. I was just asking a question.

He’s physically shown up at venues where atheists congregated and made violent gestures on his way out. How much more “credible” would it have to be if it was YOUR ass on the line?

So, he should be locked up for making “violent gestures”?

Again, I think he should be told to stop doing those things because obviously it worries and scares people. If telling him doesn’t work, there should indeed be consequences for him. For instance, being arrested and being taken to the police station is an example of such a consequence. Might cool him down a little, for a while (probably not, of course). But in a civilised country you just cannot keep people like him incarcerated for any substantial length of time for things they have only threatened they would do.

The same goes for “forced treatment”, that usually happens when something has gone wrong already.

I understand the antipathy against this man is huge, and justified. He appears to be a thoroughly unpleasant person. That doesn’t mean we can just throw him into jail or into psychiatric hospital against his will.

Suppose they’re not. The threats are still very likely to be doing other people serious harm. Some of Markuze’s victims are probably able to dismiss his threats and get on with their lives with little concern; but very likely some are not, particularly if they have already been the target of a stalker. Even if he is never likely to try to put his threats into action, he is a danger to others; if there is no way to stop him other than permanent confinement, then he should indeed be permanently confined.

if there is no way to stop him other than permanent confinement, then he should indeed be permanently confined.

Of course I agree that he should be made to stop doing the things he is apparently doing, for all the reasons you mentioned. I understand you very well. But permanent confinement, as in lifelong imprisonment?

Such permanent confinement is something civilised societies only do to people for crimes like murder with aggravating circumstances. Not for making empty threats or “violent gestures” or for displaying mental incontinence on the world wide bloody web.

Such permanent confinement is something civilised societies only do to people for crimes like murder with aggravating circumstances. Not for making empty threats or “violent gestures” or for displaying mental incontinence on the world wide bloody web.

There needs to be a sense of proportionality here. – Olav

There does indeed, and you’re the one who needs to acquire it. Stop pretending that “empty threats” are harmless. In a case like Markuze’s, they are, to some people, as harmful as serious and repeated physical assault. If there is no other way to get him to stop then yes, lifelong imprisonment would not be disproportionate in the least.

Dingo Jack, #20, perhaps I should have added the qualifier that of course I meant that only within the context of criminal cases such as the one we were actually discussing.

Can’t be too clear around these parts, there is always someone intent on misunderstanding what you write.

By the way, if I understand the Wikipedia article correctly, this Typhoid Mary left a trail of dead bodies where she went but doctors and authorities still tried to work with her, convince her to change her profession et cetera, before putting her in an indefinite quarantaine. I would say America scored some genuine civilisation points right there.

Of course, Mr. Beck, the list of reasons to hate America remains as ever, long and persuasive :-P

Olav (#22)- you are aware I wasn’t being entirely serious.
Typhoid Mary was forbidden to work as a cook (her chosen profession) and forced into working as a laundry maid (back-breaking labour), she really wasn’t given a choice. She was confined because she was a danger to others, rather than because of any fault of her own (she wasn’t ever charged with any crime).
(#23) – ‘I am – and don’t call me Shirley!’ :)
Dingo

So no evidence at all for your assertion that Kansas City atheists love a particular hate-monger. You need to go research what evidence actually is and then learn how one goes about defining an attribute of an entire population. In this case that would be atheists who happen to reside in the Kansas City area.

I gave you a link to the site where he posts; all you have to do is read through the discussions.

If you choose to ignore it, that tells me all I need to know.

You lose.

It’s a lie I ignored your defense; I did.

A comment thread of posts published by a mere and relative handful of anonymous people can not be representative of an entire city’s set of atheists. So your assertion that you can define Kansas City’s atheists with this thread, and that they love one particular person, doesn’t even come close to meeting the type of methodology required to empirically find what a sample size thinks, let alone establish that your defectively non-random sample is actually representative of the population of Kansas City atheists, even if I concede outlier results, which I do.

To amplify this massive failure in remedial thinking, your claim KC’s atheists love for one yahoo is so pervasive a position that we can assign this attribute to the KC atheist population in general, as you falsely do in this thread and then defend with no evidence at all, actually dives into Victoria Jackson territory.